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this write-up is not intended to shame anyone who participates in any form of collecting as a hobby, including funko pops. while I have a strong personal distaste for them, it's not my choice how you dedicate your time or money. I merely wish to make some observations about the way the brand reflects the ways we engage with popular art. I will also do my best to remain vague in details around the show while discussing some of its most prominent themes, as I understand that many people are wary of spoilers as a concept.
Twin Peaks is a television series which occupies an odd place in the popular consciousness. 35 years after its premier, it's become fairly cemented as a piece of pop culture emblematic of the time it released, inspiring hundreds of other works, while also holding a reputation as something odd and strange. Showrunner David Lynch is a noted auteur filmmaker, essentially synonymous with surrealist art films, despite the fact that his works are relatively accessible. Twin Peaks especially saw great success upon release, with its pilot being viewed by 34 million households in the U.S. upon initial airing at a time when channels were relatively limited. This success was due in no small part to the intrigue created by the show's marketing, based around a catchy leading question: Who Killed Laura Palmer?
The punchiness of this marketing slogan combined with the stark image of Laura Palmer -- blonde prom queen, platonic ideal of America's fascination with youth and innocence -- discovered dead and washed out on a rocky Washington shore became a highly impactful image to many people. Because of this memorability and the wave of 90s nostalgia, Laura's image became incredibly marketable, to the point of being scooped up by "geek culture" marketing geniuses Funko for their line of eternally soulless vinyl figures ostensibly representing beloved characters. An issue arises with these products, however, when they are representing characters which represent very difficult real-world topics and phenomenon in an extremely insensitive way. Funko did not choose to represent Laura as she appears in flashbacks or prequels, but as a literal plastic effigy of a murdered teenager wrapped in plastic. Complete with lip discoloration and dirt speckles!
While the complete lack of taste here is pretty self-evident, it presents an interesting case study for the ways in which artistic meaning and the communication of ideals are completely abandoned in favor of iconography when there is money to be made. Much of Laura's story within the show and prequel movie Fire Walk With Me is based around the fact that she is not viewed as an individual person, but rather for what she represents to her community in terms of desirability politics. She belongs to a well-respected upper-middle-class family, she succeeds socially and in school, and yet she is placed in intense danger by the paternalistic society in which she lives. Her cries for help in the forms of risky behaviors are constantly dismissed, both in life and following her death, reducing her to a social object for other people's use. This even reflects in how she is found after her death, smothered by plastic, an artificial and disposable yet everlasting substance.
After decades of reflection on the show and the many ideas it tries to impart on its audience, most foundationally the ideas of inherent kindness and respect for the surrounding world, it's ironic and disheartening to see Laura as a character continuously reduced in a similar way in the real world. Metatextually, she has become a plastic idol to sit on your shelf until her novelty wears off, where she is then sent to a landfill.
This reflects a mentality around popular art wherein the ideas presented are not as important as iconography. The priority is not on learning from the things you enjoy, but on signalling your allegiance to your favorite works through your dollar. This is fascilitated by the heavy emphasis on our consumerist society around brand loyalty. Just as Laura was consumed and discarded by the society in which she lived, art is expected to fulfill an urge for novelty, facilitate marketability, and then disappear until the nostalgia cycle deems it important again.
For as persistent as Twin Peaks has been, it is moreso discussed in its icons (Laura Palmer as a portrait and as a slogan, Agent Cooper with his totally 90s microcassette recorder, the red room with its stark surrealist imagery, the colorful characters of the town reduced simply to marketable eccentricities with their desires and ambitions completely strucken) than for any wider narrative that may challenge preconceived notions within our society. Discussions of its themes or the specific ways in which it uses the conventions of its medium are relegated almost exclusively to academic film circles, schools of thought which are just as easily dismissed in a mainstream sense as "pretentious". This is a great disservice both to the work itself and those who enjoy it, no matter their background. While not everyone has the language to discuss these concepts, the ideas which art can impart on us even subconsciously are extremely important.
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lucid-soup
Jesus wept
fr this is ridiculous.
this was a sad but very well written read. thank you!
DeepEyes
I'm really not one for waxing poetically about art and media, that being said no matter how you slice it making a figure like this is totally insane, and if you actually enjoy the show you shouldn't touch this shit with a ten foot pole
KERMITSTAN897:D
I'm glad to hear someone speak on this. I think your discussion on how we as a culture have started viewing art is really interesting. Within twin peaks fan spaces specifically I've seen some people saying "oh I'm so Laura paulmer coded" and things along those lines. Not because they relate to what she went through but just because she's a beautiful girl and they romanticize her trauma. I've only just recently gotten into twin peaks but I'm truly in awe of how raw and real Laura feels. It feels so strange to just boil her down to figure of her lifeless corpse. It feels even worse having seen the exact events leading up to that from Fire Walk with Me. The scene with her and Ronette being taken to the train is so horrific.
I've seen what you're talking about regarding "laura palmer is literally me" and that type of sentiment. a lot of the people who say things like that are pretty young, so I try to avoid getting too judgemental, but it seems like a lot of it is based more on what she offers as an aesthetic than anything. it seems like a lot of these people almost rewrite her story in their heads to fit a perfect victim narrative or "hell is a teenage girl" alongside those other aesthetic components. I sort of understand where it comes from, but it feels very superficial and unintentionally anti-intellectual.
there's a very real compassion for women in a very raw and angry way in a lot of lynch's work. it's far from the only aspect of his work and general "vibes" that gets reduced in the popular consensus, but it's very hurtful. particularly with fire walk with me, which I find to be more emotionally affecting and horrifying in its deep humanism than anything else I've ever seen.
by NuclearBlues; ; Report
gia ｡𖦹°‧
holy shit thats actually insane. GENUINELY what were they thinking when they made this. WHO APPROVED THIS?!?!?!!? it wouldve been so much easier to do like. her black lodge outfit or even one of her outfits from fire walk with me. but they settled on this?! thats so gross. i was gonna say they might aswell make leland/bob funko pops at this point too but... guess what, THEY DID??? what an evil company
right? it looks like as some sort of limited run they made one of her and cooper's black lodge looks with a frankly insane price tag... I don't get why they didn't go for that in the first place. there's still the issue of commodification of a character that represents very real violence and objectification facing women, but that isn't unique to this company and it's got to be better than a literal depiction of her fucking corpse.
by NuclearBlues; ; Report
Xavier
wow
got a big headache so im about to sign off for a little while but i def wanna come back and read this properly
scrolled down and saw the picture and jfc....
i never finished twin peaks (couldn't get past the first few eps of season 2 lol the teenagers annoyed me) but i liked what i did see of it
just seeing this total commodification of a dead girl's body, ik it's "just a show" or whatever but it feels so crude and distasteful, esp in the context of abuse and violence young girls and women still face today
like....ur literally making a chibi doll to sell for people who will display it next to like, fuckin harley quinn and batman and captain america, and it's the corpse of a dead girl
i'd get it if they did other characters from the show or even laura palmer alive, but this is kinda wild lol. ik it's an iconic visual but it's iconic bc of its context, and this just spits in the face of the original intent of the creators
totally fair about season 2, the first half is quite good still but the second half gets... rough. I've seen the show in full about 8 times at this point but any subplot based too heavily around donna and/or james gets beyond exhausting.
I thought about the "just a show" angle a bit while I was writing this and I get that it probably isn't that serious, there are far worse things in the world than a tasteless product, but something about just how stark the contrast is between something so serious and something so closely associated with cheesy "geek culture" just really got to me. it feels very insulting, not just to the character but to the very real ideas, concepts, and experiences she represents. fiction and art don't exist in a vacuum, yknow?
in fairness, this wasn't the only figure based on the show that funko released. I believe there's one of cooper, the log lady, and audrey at the least. regardless, the choice to pick this specific imagery around laura is questionable at best and misses the point in my opinion. in general I find this type of marketing very distasteful and I have a lot of thoughts about the similar commodification of laura's iconic portrait, but at least that wouldn't have been a depiction of the aftermath of an act of violence against a teenage girl. tonality matters, this isn't the tone appropriate for this subject matter at all.
by NuclearBlues; ; Report
Dart Highwind
It is a rather strange figure, isn't it, the corpse of a character?
Granted, I have never seen the show so that's as far as my understanding goes, but still.
I've seen dolls of fashionable (un)dead high school teens that I can understand better than this.
I'm willing to understand if someone explains it to me, but what I really would like to know is:
Who is buying this?
Who is this for?
If you bought this, did it spark joy? (Were you enthralled when this released?)
in my opinion, the difference between this and something like a monster high doll is tone. horror-themed fashion dolls exist within a playful tone, and aren't really based around any specific ways their characters died/were cursed/etc. the setting is entirely different, and they're specifically designed to be that way rather than being adapted from something discussing death in a sober and realistic way.
didn't buy it and wouldn't buy it so I can't really answer your third question, but I can take a crack at the first two and they fit essentially the same answer: nostalgia buyers. enough people associate the show with their younger days that they'll spend money on whatever reminds them of that, same for any other property associated with a specific time period. it just happens that laura's corpse is one of the most prominent moments early on in the show when more people were watching it, making it memorable enough to market regardless of taste or any wider implications.
by NuclearBlues; ; Report
I agree.
I'd really like to have a conversation with someone who has one, though.
Maybe even a conversation with the people who were responsible for bringing this product into reality. The concept is just beyond my understanding.
I get why people collect. I'm a huge fan of things from my childhood and I have quite a few collectibles, some of which are quite rare and valuable. However, the fact that it's a dead character irks me.
In the franchise my page is based on. .Hack, a character is literally crucified and killed within the first half hour of the first game in the series. If a statue of that moment were to come out, I would be pretty confused, if not bothered, despite that moment being of great importance to the plot.
by Dart Highwind; ; Report
for sure, collecting is a perfectly fine hobby. I'm a massive hypocrite in some respects, used to be really into action figures and I still spend most of my extra money on CDs, analog camcorders, VHS tapes, and all sorts of other niche collection-based hobbies. I've primarily switched to these over the years because of the fact that collecting is kind of a secondary usage for them. I listen to all of my music and watch all of my movies, I use my camcorders for amateur video projects. that's a personal choice though, and I totally get why people would want to collect things purely for the joy of building a collection. I worry about how this feeds into consumerist waste, but so long as people are mindful of the impact I don't think it's intrinsically bad in any sense.
by NuclearBlues; ; Report